CHAPTER XXV

ON his left, farther away from the town, and about a mile distant, stood a small mountain. Dark-red as to soil, bristling with sandstone bowlders, sparcely grown with pines and thorny locust-trees, and gashed by rain-washed gullies, it rose majestically against the cloud-flecked blue of infinite space beyond.

Hardly knowing why he did so, Galt turned his face toward it and strode on, vaguely conscious that he was battling against the soul-calamity which had beset him as a dumb beast might fight for its physical life. Around the sloping base of the mountain lay old worn-out fields, now given over to the riotous possession of anything which would take root upon its soil. There was no path leading to the seldom visited elevation, but with his eyes constantly on the solitary finger of earth he climbed over the old rail-fence encompassing the land, and forged his way through the dense undergrowth, now ploughing his feet through a matting of heather and dewberry-vines, or plunging unexpectedly into some weed-hidden spring or fresh-water stream. Between him and the mountain ran a creek, and he suddenly found himself at a spot on the banks of it, where, as a boy, home on his vacations, he used to fish. But it had changed, he told himself, as everything else had changed—he was a man now, but such a man!

Crossing the creek on a foot-log formed from the fallen corpse of a giant oak he had once known, he walked onward. The land was now sloping sharply upward, and his way was less impeded. The air was becoming more rarefied, the view on either side and behind him was unfolding more rapidly in the hazy distance. The sun, which had been beating on him mercilessly, was now behind a drifting cloud, and the cool breezes of a higher altitude fanned his flushed face.

Finally he reached a flat, jutting bowlder near the top, and, exhausted from the inconsiderate tax on his muscles, he sank down panting. There lay old Stafford nearest at hand, and beyond stretched out the new town under its web of smoke, the besmudged handwriting of mercantile progress. His brain had fostered the idea, and made it practicable. Reaching out southward, in the sunlight, like two threads of silver, lay the great steel highway which his foresight and ambition had brought into existence. His fancy pictured with lightning flashes the growing villages and towns, as he had seen them on the opening day when he, like an emperor of a conquered territory, had been escorted over it. The moment had given him the thrill of gratified avarice and the empty glory of conquest, but the eyes of the eager throngs which had gazed upon him in wonder and envy that day saw nothing of the cancer which even then was eating into the vitals of his higher nature. Then—But why contemplate it? The juggernaut of relentless Right had ground him under its wheels.

He locked his arms over his knees, lowered his head, and groaned in sheer despair. If Dora had only given him a bare chance! But she hadn’t, and now, loved as woman never was loved before, desired in spirit and body as woman never was desired by man, she had coldly, firmly put him from her. The sight of her as she sat holding his child in her arms, and spurning him as was her right to spurn him, would haunt him into and through the Eternity which had now become such a hopeless reality.

Suddenly raising his eyes to the relentless blue above, he tried to frame a prayer.

“O God, have mercy!” he cried. “Show me, a sinner, a way out of the darkness of my damnation. Give them to me, that I may atone by my conduct to them throughout my life. Soften her heart, O God, and open her eyes to the depths of my woe! I have suffered, I will suffer on to the end, but give me my wife and child!”

Noon came and passed, but he had no thought of thirst or of hunger. He remained there on the rock and watched the sun go down, and saw the soft veil of coming darkness thicken over the earth. Now old Stafford lay in darkness, save for the dazzling circles of light where the arc-lamps swung across the streets and were grouped like a constellation in the square. He waited till the town clock had struck nine; then, still without sense of fatigue or hunger, he went down, now with considerable difficulty, owing to the darkness of the incline.

He managed to reach his front gate without meeting any one, and was entering when he saw the figure of a woman emerge from the veranda and come slowly down the walk. Could it be one of the servants? he asked himself. But his answer was the recognition of the woman herself. It was Mrs. Barry. She paused, unable, it seemed, to formulate what she had to say, so sudden was the meeting, and his heart sank lower, as the thought came to him that something might have happened to Dora or the child.

“I came to see you,” she began, pushing back the bonnet which had partially obscured her face. “Your servants told me they didn’t know where you were.”

“You wanted to see me?” he gasped. “Has anything gone wrong?”

“No, it is not that,” the woman said, leading the way toward a clump of cedars on the grass, as if from the sensitive fear of meeting some one on the walk. “My daughter and the child came home at noon. I saw from her looks that she was troubled over something, and that Lionel had been crying, from the marks on his face; but I did not question either of them. All this afternoon she did not speak of you, but to-night, after she had put the boy to sleep, she came into my room and sat down near me. I knew she was in awful struggle over something. She began telling me, in a slow, halting voice, of all that you had said. She is my only child, Kenneth Galt, but I don’t understand her any better than if she were not of my flesh and blood. I never fully understood her father. I suppose no practical-minded person can comprehend those who live in the imagination, surrounded by ideals which become real to them. She began to go over the whole history of her trouble from the very first, and she never left out a single detail. She summed it all up in the most marvellous manner. My heart ached for her as it never had before. She wants to do right, she says, and she knows what would be right and self-sacrificing on her part, but she says she simply can’t conquer the offended pride within her. She has had trouble and we are poor, but there never was born a queen with more pride of womanhood.”

“Yes, yes,” Galt gasped, as he stared at her. “I know; I know.”

“Then I tried to advise her,” Mrs. Barry went on. “At first it was like talking to a person born deaf, but finally she began to listen, for, as a last resort, I was holding up the child’s interests. I spoke of what a glorious thing a trip to Paris would be—to stay there as long as we liked, and to be able to come home again, for we do love it here, and I am sure the people would be kind in their view of it. I reminded her that once, when we asked Lionel what he had rather have than anything on earth, he had said that, first, he wanted a father like other children, and, next, that he wanted to be where he could have playmates.”

“Oh, I can’t bear it, Mrs. Barry!” Galt groaned. “If there is anything under high heaven I could do to rectify my mistake, I’d give my life to do it.”

“I know it, Kenneth, and I am going to say something that may surprise you. I don’t harbor any ill-feeling toward you. I simply can’t. Living so close with Dora has lifted me up in spiritual things. I can’t have anything but pity for the consequences of sin and temptation. What you did wasn’t a proof that you didn’t love my child. It only proved that the temptation you had, at the moment of your fall, kept you from realizing what you would lose. That’s all. I believe you loved her then, that you did even after you left her, and I am sure that you do now more than ever; in fact, I made that plain to her. I think she sees it, too, in her way; but it doesn’t help her overcome her pride. I am sorry for her—more so than I ever imagined I could be for a woman under any trial. She is pulled many ways by duty, and she is fairly in an agony, undecided as to—”

“Undecided? Did you say that?” Galt leaned forward eagerly, his lips quivering, as he waited breathlessly.

“Yes, she is undecided. You see, things have come to such a focus that we must leave here. She has just learned that Fred Walton has been falsely accused by many persons, and she always liked him. He is coming back home, and she wants to clear his name, and yet she shrinks from having her private affairs brought in public view again. She said, herself, that if she could get her own consent to become your wife, then everybody would understand the truth, and not blame him. Then there is the child—”

“Yes, Lionel!” Galt panted. “We must save him, and we can—we can, if Dora could only—”

“She knows that full well,” the woman said, passing her gaunt hand over her withered mouth and swallowing the rising lump in her throat. “If you only could have—have heard what I did to-night it would have wrung tears from your eyes. Lionel had waked up, and she had to go to him. He couldn’t sleep for what was on his mind. Kenneth Galt, that little angel was simply begging his mother not to let you go away—think of it, actually pleading for you! He had heard you say you were going, and, in some way, he fancied Dora could persuade you to stay. He cried till his little pillow was wet. He told her he loved you, that you had said he was your little boy, and that he wanted to be with you always. I heard her pleading with him and arguing, but through it all his little voice would continue to cry out that it should not be so—that he wanted you, and that you wanted him.”

“God bless him!” burst from the lips of the bowed man.

“Finally he dropped to sleep,” Mrs. Barry went on, “and slept, still sobbing, as children do when wrought up high, and she left him and came again to me. Poor thing! She was simply undone—conquered! She put her head in my lap and burst out crying. She sobbed and sobbed a long time, and then I asked her if she would let me manage it. She knew what I meant—exactly what I meant, for she became like a lump of clay in my lap. For a long time she lay like that, hardly breathing. Then I told her of what a wonderful influence she had been to me in opening my eyes, old as I am, to the beauty of a higher, spiritual life, and that in holding back, as she was now doing, and refusing to pardon a repentant man, even when the happiness of her own child was at stake, she was going backward instead of forward. She seemed to realize it. She sat up straight, and the old light of sweetness and gentleness seemed to dawn in her face. ‘I’ll simply put myself in your hands, mother,’ she said—‘in your hands!’

“I broke down and cried in pure joy, Kenneth Galt. Then what do you think? I heard her go back to her room, and knew that the child had waked. I am not sure; but I think she waked him purposely, for she never could bear to have him go to sleep unhappy. I heard her telling him about the beauty of Paris—about its streets, its boulevards, and its parks; its buildings; its statuary and pictures, and of the pretty children who were to be his friends. She laughed like a happy child—they were always like two children, anyway—when she told him about crossing the ocean in a great ship, and of the high waves, deep water, and big fish. But he stopped her with a question. What do you think it was, Kenneth? He wanted to know if you were going? I knew she hesitated, her pride closing her lips, even there alone with her child. She wouldn’t answer his question. Then I heard Lionel say plainly, and there was a strange sort of stubborness in his little voice: ‘Well, I don’t want to go; he would not want me to leave him; he said so once; he said he would never leave me, and I wasn’t to leave him. Is he going, mother?’ he kept asking.

“Then I heard her say, ‘Yes, darling, he is going—now you can sleep!’”

“She said that? Did she say that?” Galt cried, his whole despondent being aflame.

“Yes; it is settled, Kenneth. Perhaps, in time, you and she will be thoroughly happy together. I don’t know, but I hope so.”

“Thank God!” Galt said, fervently, and, taking the old woman’s hand, he wrung it in an ecstasy of delight. “I only wanted a chance, Mrs. Barry. I shall devote my life to all of you, and we can be happy—gloriously happy over there. She shall be our queen, and Lionel our little prince. I’ll have this old house kept in order, and some day we’ll come back to it.”

“Then here is my plan,” Mrs. Barry said. “Meet us in Atlanta the day after to-morrow, and we shall be ready to sail. I’ll let you know what hotel we go to. The news will come back from there, but we sha’n’t be here during the reception of it. Now, I’m glad, for your sake as well as ours, that it is all going to turn out well. I want to see you happy. You have suffered enough, and so has she. As for me, I never was so happy in my life. I want to go to Paris for a while. My husband is buried there, you know.”